The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Modern display or presentation devices typically include computer apparatus such as networked, desktop, laptop, handheld or tablet personal computers (PCs), personal digital assistants (PDAs), interactive television terminals, gaming apparatus and cell phones. Each item of apparatus usually has a single display, and this may be in the form of a traditional computer, television or cell phone display screen or may take the form of projection equipment, virtual reality goggles, projection spectacles, holographic projections, electronic paper or cerebral implants.
There is a desire amongst viewers accessing a large volume of material content to be able to browse and navigate the full set of content in order to find a subset or single unit of content which is relevant or interesting to the viewer. Currently such browsing and navigation is typically conducted by means of descriptive text typed into search engine software and thereby matched to text contained in the material content itself or to text which a content provider has used to label the content. Browsing and navigation is also sometimes aided by third-party content categorizers who provide directories and sub-directories of content labels and descriptions.
However, these techniques for browsing and navigating large volumes of material content for display inevitably rely upon the individual viewer's skills in language and logic, as well as that of the content providers. With directory searching, the viewer must guess and replicate the logic followed by the third-party content categorizers, who must categorize and describe material content accurately and in a way which will readily be found by the intended viewers. With text entry searching, viewers need a good verbal memory to think of appropriate search terms, an extensive vocabulary, and skills in using Boolean logic in order to enter the most effective text, and content providers must accurately guess which keywords will be entered by viewers searching for their material content.